This blog provides advice to writers on their literary work.
See end of this post for links on these topics:
How can you get the full benefit of workshops? How can you work best with your mentor? What, when, and how should you publish?

Thursday, September 4, 2014

What Writers Can Learn from Baseball Players

Writers and
athletes might not seem to have much in common, since one occupation is mostly
cerebral, while the other is very physical. I do think writers can learn a lot
from athletes, though. Athletes are also absorbed in a quest for excellence.
Like writers, athletes are performers whose goal is not a performance, but a
career-long struggle to do their best at their craft.

Baseball is the
sport that I know better than any other, and there are two things about playing
baseball well that seem valuable for writers. One of them is adjusting. To
succeed at baseball, you have to make constant adjustments, sometimes in the space
of one at-bat. When Barry Bonds was playing, I watched him hit many times at
the San Francisco Giants’ beautiful waterfront ballpark.

Part of Barry’s
success was that he could adjust to a pitcher’s strategy incredibly quickly. If
a pitcher got Barry to swing at a ball that was low and outside early in the
count, Barry would just act cool, as if he had no idea what the pitcher was up
to. Then, maybe after Barry had fouled off a pitch and taken a couple of balls,
he would know what the pitcher and catcher were setting him up for. He knew
they were hoping to sneak that same low, outside pitch by him for a swinging
strike three. Barry just casually inched closer and closer to home plate with
each pitch, so his bat could extend a bit farther, and the next time that
pitcher threw him the same pitch Barry had hopelessly missed earlier in the
at-bat, WHAM!—home run.

So, what does
that have to do with lyric poetry? A lot, in my opinion. Just as batters have
to adjust to what the pitchers are throwing them so they don’t make the same
mistake twice, artists have to make constant adjustments. It doesn’t work to
write the same book twice, or the same poem, short story, memoir or essay, no matter how good it
was the first time. The reader is already expecting a certain type of
character, a certain tension, a certain ending. Writers have to continually vary the sounds, images, situations, characters, settings,
tones, and/or points of view in their work. Otherwise their writing becomes
stale, predictable, tired.

Another way that
baseball and writing are similar has to do with confidence. If the same two
teams play one another with the same two starting pitchers on the mound, the
outcome can be completely opposite on two different days in the same baseball
season. What is the difference? Many times, it has to do with confidence. The
vital importance of confidence in baseball is something I’ve learned from
listening to the San Francisco Giants’ broadcaster Mike Krukow, a former major
league pitcher.

Kruk, as he’s known to fans, always talks about how winning
builds confidence in a team. That confidence allows them to play loose,
relaxed, and with enjoyment. This prevents a hitter from pressing during an at-bat,
trying to do too much, feeling the weight of expectations. The result of
confidence is often success.

Again, what the
heck does that have to do with writing the twist at the end of a short story?
Well, it does have to do with writing—I think that when a writer is enjoying the
process of creation, that fun can be reflected in the reader’s own enjoyment of
the finished product. But this also has to do with reading one’s work out loud.
So much of reading aloud has to do with confidence. If you stand in front of an
audience and feel assured that your work is going to please and engage, that is
a crucial part of giving a good reading. If you’re so nervous you could die,
you’re not going to be able to connect to the audience of readers. But how do
you gather confidence as a reader of your work? I think it’s a largely question
of practice, and of writing work that you believe in, that you feel is
important for you personally to deliver to an audience, or that you have fun
reading to an audience.